Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Catholic clergy 'abused children for decades in County Donegal'

County Donegal in Ireland is about to have its bucolic image shattered by a report into how paedophiles, both clergy and laity, abused children for decades.

An
investigation into clerical sex abuse in the Catholic diocese of Raphoe
in County Donegal is about to report its findings, which are expected
to be damning.

Meanwhile, new evidence has emerged from victims of a
parallel paedophile ring operating in the same Gaelic-speaking corner of
the Irish Republic.

A number of survivors of abuse have told the
Guardian that lay members of the church as well as priests sexually
exploited them for years in the county.

And as with the expected
conclusion of the report into Raphoe, they say the national police
service, the Garda, was complicit in a culture of cover-up that allowed
the perpetrators to carry on abusing them.

Speaking for the first
time about his abuse as a child and the subsequent cover-up, John
O'Donnell revealed that he had been abused since he was nine by a lay
member of a local church choir.

"He assaulted me from when I was
nine until I was 15, until I was old enough to know it was wrong. This
man took advantage because I was adopted and regarded as something lower
than most kids in the area.

"The abuse took place at his home and in a shop he ran. It went on from 1965 to 1972."

O'Donnell
said that in 1973 he went to a local Garda station to report that he
had been raped by the man, who has since died. He said the reaction to
his claim was violent.

"A local guard was outraged that I was
naming such a fine upstanding member of the community as a child rapist.
The officer slapped me on the face and told me to get out. He said to
me that I was adopted and not worth anything. From that day on I never
fully trusted a member of the Garda Síochána."

For years,
O'Donnell said, he hid what had happened to him, and got married and
raised a family without discussing it with his loved ones. It was only
in the late 1990s when revelations of widespread child abuse rocked the
Irish Catholic church that he decided to face up to what had happened to
him.

"I found out that my abuser was still in the church choir
and I was outraged because he was working with children. So I drove up
to a parochial house in the area and tried to speak to the parish priest
about this man. At the time I had finally got somewhere with the gardaí
and they had questioned this man in a Donegal police station. I
informed the parish priest about this but he wouldn't even let me across
his door. He kept saying: 'No, no, no … I am not speaking to you about
this.' He didn't want to know, and bear in mind this was only back in
2005."

O'Donnell has claimed that other victims in this corner of
Donegal are coming forward, with a picture emerging of an organised
paedophile ring. Police are investigating their claims.

The
Guardian has spoken to a number of other men in Donegal who have made
similar allegations of an abuse ring and a cover-up spanning decades.

Throughout
the decades of denial, the young men who were preyed upon by
paedophiles in the county, both inside and outside the church, had one
champion – a retired police detective, Martin Ridge.

Ridge moved
to the county at the end of his career, and became so disturbed by
official indifference that he wrote a book about the children's
experiences, Breaking the Silence.

He predicted that the Raphoe
report would be "damning" and expose the same culture of "local denial
and cover-up" that was found in other Catholic dioceses across Ireland.

Ridge
admitted the police force he served in all his working life would not
be spared withering criticism in the Raphoe report.

Two years ago the
Murphy report into widespread clerical abuse of children in Dublin,
Ireland's largest Catholic diocese, found that senior Garda officers
colluded with four archbishops and top clerics in covering up the sex
crimes of priests on a massive scale in the city.

"There were 45
victims of three different paedophiles, one of whom was a priest,
another a school teacher. None of the victims wanted to be interviewed
in local gardaí stations. The question has to be asked as to why they
did not trust the local force when this was going on," Ridge said.

The
ex-Garda officer too has confirmed that an investigation is now under
way into the alleged ring of abuse in north-west Ireland involving both
priests and non-members of the clergy.

It is understood to include an
investigation into how a convicted child sex offender got a job in a
local youth hostel after he was released from prison in 2006.

O'Donnell,
meanwhile, opted to remain living in Falcarragh, County Donegal,
despite the climate of cover-up and fear he has had to endure.

Surveying
the natural beauty of the area, with its stunning mountains and
seascapes, the 55-year-old said: "Yes, it's a beautiful area with
amazing views and scenery … it would be even more beautiful but for some
of the bastards still living here."